


The Eristic

by oh_mr_adams



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Angst, Arranged Marriage, Canon Disabled Character, Character Study, Childhood, Fallen London, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Neurodiversity, The Hegelian Dialectic, i once joked that his first name was actually august but then i got attached to it, platonic marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28372509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_mr_adams/pseuds/oh_mr_adams
Summary: "In philosophy and rhetoric, eristic (from Eris, the ancient Greek goddess of chaos, strife, and discord) refers to argument that aims to successfully dispute another's argument, rather than searching for truth. According to T.H. Irwin, "It is characteristic of the eristic to think of some arguments as a way of defeating the other side, by showing that an opponent must assent to the negation of what he initially took himself to believe." Eristic is arguing for the sake of conflict, as opposed to resolving conflict."A fixture of high Society, the Jovial Contrarian is much admired and little loved. The story of his life is a dialectic with no synthesis.A bit of a character study that got out of hand, with gratuitously self-indulgent characterization.
Relationships: The Jovial Contrarian & Emilia Hathersage (Fallen London), The Jovial Contrarian/Sinning Jenny (Fallen London)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19





	The Eristic

At nine, he isn’t sure what it’s like to have a friend.

The kids that are kind are kind enough to be adopted and the ones that aren’t are overwhelmingly straightforward in their opinion of him. It’s an opinion that doesn’t need to be vocalized, as it’s voiced loudly enough by the silence that falls when he enters a room, and that’s on a good day. On most days, it’s made very clear by the pointed glares and the shoving and the laughter. On bad days, it’s with beatings and especially miserable days are marked by the times they run off, grinning, with his crutches and leave him outside overnight. At first, he tries to convince himself that it was all in good fun - the kind of thing rowdy children do to each other. They wouldn’t have known how frustrating it was to try and get back to his room without them. 

The illusion falters the night they tie him to a fence post and leave him there, in the dark. It’s always dark, but this is worse, it’s cold and the air smells of rain. The custodian eventually finds him in the morning, drenched and exhausted, and after he’s asked who did this, he’s resented for snitching. Part of him truly wonders if it was all in good fun, and he’d simply ruined it.   
  
He isn’t sure what came first, the bullying or the snitching; the years in the orphanage blend together, in time. A boy that can’t exactly  _ run away  _ is a prime candidate for whatever misplaced anger the other kids are harboring, and perhaps he began ratting them out as vengeance. Contrarily, this only made them all despise him further, and misplaced anger became justified hatred, and after the third time he’d told the headmistress about a stash of food hidden under someone’s bed, they’re holding his head in the toilet and telling him that  _ no one likes a rat. _ _   
_ _   
_ But when the headmistress ruffles his hair and tells him that he did very well and that  _ he’s a good boy _ , August begins crying for reasons he doesn’t understand.

Good boys get adopted, he thinks, even if they’re also told they talk too much and too loudly and  _ no parents would ever willingly pick such a defective- _ Good boys get adopted, and so he becomes an informant of sorts, his peers hating him more and more with every pat on the head and affirmation that he did well to tell on them. When the other kids are asked  _ “Why can’t you be more like August?”  _ he looks away, though the hate is tangible. 

The beatings become more regular, his crutches begin to disappear more often, the bad days become most days and a new milestone is reached for especially miserable days when they attempt to poison his food with cleaning supplies. Death isn’t permanent in the Neath; it’s just another obstacle. Just another way to pass the time.

He doesn’t know if he’s trying so hard to be adopted because it’s simply something to strive for, or because he just wants to get away from here. Deep down though, deep enough where he’d never be able to admit it, he simply wants to be  _ loved. _

At eleven, he has a family.   
  
He barely believes it, and the headmistress looks almost as shocked as he does when she tells him that a society couple is interested in adopting him. He lays in bed that night, in a room with eleven other boys that despise him, full of excitement and disbelief. It’s what he’d been working for - making himself a target for, all these years. And yet even when he meets the couple, his… his  _ parents,  _ he can barely believe it. They’re adopting him, and the question that lingers in the back of his mind is  _ why?  _ but he does not acknowledge it. He doesn’t have to know why, he’s getting out of here and that’s what matters.   
  
When he meets them, everything becomes even more confusing. They’re smiling at him and he hasn’t even done anything to earn it yet. They don’t wince at the sight of his crutches or the odd way he walks and they shake his hand warmly and tell him they’re so happy to make him a part of their family. He doesn’t understand it, but when he’s offered some time to think it over, immediately he refuses and says he wants to go with them. He wants to go  _ home.  _ He’s too confused to cry. He’s so happy, he thinks, that it’s completely overwhelmed him and left him incapable of communicating. His brain still hasn’t registered the idea that he has a  _ home  _ now, that he has a  _ family. _

When his parents notice the way he struggles with his crutches, even after a decade of practice, and they give him a wheeled chair, he bursts into tears. 

They’re bewildered by it, and so is he, and yet he can’t seem to stop crying long enough to explain himself. Even if he could, he isn’t sure what there is to say. He starts to panic - crying gets you hit, or worse - which makes him cry harder, desperately trying to explain, or possibly justify himself. But now his  _ mother  _ (he can barely think the word) is holding him and petting his hair and telling him that it’s alright to cry (another thing he doesn’t understand) and his  _ father  _ is quietly rubbing his back while he sobs and some lost and broken part of his subconscious finally breaks the news to August that he’s  _ loved.  _

He still doesn’t really understand it, but he doesn’t have to. The simple notion of it is enough for now. 

He almost bursts into tears again when they tell him that yes, this whole bedroom is his, but he restrains himself. They tell him they can have his favorite food for dinner and he doesn’t have one, so he says the first thing that comes to mind. An instinct of self-preservation makes him watch as his food is prepared and he doesn’t pause to think about how no one is out to get him anymore. While he eats his sandwich at the dinner table with his family, he realizes that this is his favorite food now. 

At twelve, he discovers a passion for debate.

He becomes attuned to society expectations very quickly, considering how the difference between this life and his past is like night and day. Though, in the Neath, he reckons, there’s not much of a difference at all. He’s heard stories of the sun and moon, though no matter how hard he tries, he can’t recall any memories of them. It’s no great loss, and he has to focus on the matter at hand; understanding the intricacies of the lives of society folk.   
  
He’s society folk now and he’s amongst society folk, and one thing he comes to understand is that there is actually very little difference between society kids and orphans. Despite being given the finest educations, despite being raised to epitomize politeness and decency, despite never having known the threat of not getting enough to eat, or having your blankets stolen, or the looming despair of never knowing a family, society kids, he realizes, are very much capable of the same sort of cruelty as orphans. He has lots of time to ponder this theory on the various occasions in which he’s been locked in one of the many closets of the Shuttered Palace. 

He calls it a theory, despite the overwhelming evidence of fact, as theories leave room for dissension, postulation, conjecture. He can sit in that cramped closet for hours, his legs going numb, examining thoroughly every aspect of the notion. It’s a wonderful way to pass the time, and the process is far more engaging than the conclusion.

Hypothesis. Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. It becomes a logical puzzle, only the goal isn’t to complete it, rather, it’s to avoid completion by any means necessary. After eliminating the impossible, whatever remains must be true, but he’ll argue that there’s an infinite realm of impossibilities to denounce, even if after a while they begin to become more and more ludicrous. The more ludicrous they are, however, the better they distract him from just how dark this closet is.

Hypothesis: If the kids in the Shuttered Palace would be compared to the kids in the orphanage, then, one will find that there is very little meaningful difference between them. 

Thesis: The kids at the orphanage would steal his crutches. The kids at the palace take his chair. (Counterpoint: Not as often, though.) (Counter-counterpoint: It’s much more difficult to take.) (Counterpoint rescinded.)   
  
Thesis: The kids at the orphanage wouldn’t speak to him. The kids at the palace ignore him too. (Counterpoint: the kids at the palace are society kids. They’re busy. They have obligations.) (Counter-counterpoint: they find time to lock him in closets. They find time to very obviously ignore his attempts at friendship.) (Counterpoint rescinded.)

Thesis: The kids at the orphanage hurt him. A lot. The bruises remain the same, still. (Counterpoint: The kids at the orphanage tried to kill you, August.) (Counter-counterpoint: Society kids are held to different expectations. There’s no evidence that they don’t want to.) (Counter-counter-counterpoint: That’s simply conjecture with no factual basis.) (Counter-counter-counter-counterpoint: That does not refute my initial claim. I’m still being hurt.) (Addendum: there must be a simpler way of making counterpoints.) (Counter-addendum:) (That’s not a word!) (So? You get the point.) (You can’t counter an addendum!) (You’re stalling.) 

Antithesis: There is a world of difference between the kids at the palace and the kids at the orphanage. (Interjection: the initial hypothesis specified meaningful difference.) ...There is meaningful difference between the kids at the palace and the kids at the orphanage. By nature... no, human beings have no innate nature. (Can we debate that instead? That sounds fun.) By their upbringing, however, the two demographics acquire notable differences. In their mannerisms, their personalities, their worldviews, their values, and moral structures. All these things are shaped very heavily by circumstance. Just because the same events are occurring, does not mean that the two can be so readily compared. Like night and day.   
  
Synthesis: The common factor is you, August.   
  
(Counterpoint:

  
  


At fourteen, he’s placed in an arranged marriage.

It’s another thing he doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t object. It’s simply the way  _ society folk  _ do things, and he is society folk now. He has a society surname and society clothes and society manners, although, he’ll argue, he’s always had those, except for when he talks too much. He doesn’t yet comprehend the nonsense about all the different forks but he’s always been a polite sort, and he feels very proud when his parents praise that fact.

He’s always been a polite sort, and so on the day he is to meet his future spouse, he’s wearing his nicest suit, though, after a half-hour’s debate on which of his suits is the nicest, he’s having second thoughts. Green brings out his eyes, doesn’t it? Is that a good thing? He’s often been told he makes far too much eye contact. Would that make it worse? Should he even be wearing his nicest suit? Will that not just set the person up for disappointment later on? If it did, would he feel obligated to continually obtain a theoretically infinite amount of increasingly nicer suits, as to never have to let them down? He’s being absurd, but it’s better than being nervous.

The girl shows up late and it’s evident she doesn’t want to be there. He doesn’t blame her. It’s a miracle his parents found a family willing to go through with it in the first place, he thinks placidly. He can tell by the way her parents look at him that they’re not all that pleased either. “Play nice, Emilia,” the girl’s mother says, and the girl who is apparently named Emilia gives a huff, making a rude gesture towards the door after it closes. When her gaze turns to August, it’s cold, and fear wells up in his chest.   
  
She’s standing only a few inches taller than him, and he’s sitting. He’s always been awkwardly tall for his age, but the dichotomy of their heights is quite amusing. He won’t laugh, though. She’s still incredibly intimidating. He coughs slightly, offering his hand.    
  
“You must be Emilia!” He chirps.   
  


“What’s it to you?” She looks him over and he puts his hand down when he realizes she isn’t going to shake it. Blinking heavily, he tries to process her question. Who asks something like that? He clears his throat again.   
  
“I’m August!” His enthusiasm is a little forced. She sits down on a bench with a harsh sigh, not looking at him.

“That’s nice.”

Hypothesis: If one attempts to parse apart someone’s behavior, then one will find evidence as to how they feel towards them.

Thesis: She hates you. (Counterpoint: She doesn’t even know you.) (Rebuttal: That’s not a counterpoint. Lots of people hate you without getting to know you.) 

Antithesis: She doesn’t hate you. She’s nervous and this is how she expresses that. Conversely, she hates the whole concept of arranged marriages, but not you particularly. Maybe she just doesn’t like guys. (Counterpoint: Wild conjecture.) (Rebuttal: So? They’re not impossibilities, yet.)

Synthesis: You have to try again.   
  
He wheels over to where she’s sitting and clears his throat again. “So… what are you into?” He tries. Her eyebrows raise slightly as she looks him over again.   
  
“Bombs.” He can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic. He’s not sure if wants her to be. She smirks slightly when his eyes go wide and he sits up a little straighter in his chair. 

“Well, I don’t believe in violence. But I suppose that kind of technology must have many very interesting facets. And it’s always good to have… interests.”

Her smirk fades and she regards him with a guarded, yet intrigued suspicion. “Yeah…” she says quietly. “It does. And it is.” He’s incredibly motivated by receiving any real response at all, and he starts to fiddle awkwardly with his hands, not wanting to lose her again.    
  
“So…” he trails off as he tugs at a lock of his hair, “Do you… make them?” Oh god, what an idiotic question. You can’t just ask people if they make bombs! Especially girls! (Why not? Is it a private thing? And don’t be sexist.) He stares at her and she stares back.   
  
“Yes,” she says firmly. Oh. Well, that’s that then. He blinks. “Although,” Oh thank god, she has more to say, “I’m not really allowed to anymore. After I… ruined the basement.” His eyes go wide again. Emilia is certainly… a character, he thinks. Doesn’t seem the society type. She sighs. “Apparently I’m (her voice gets mockingly high and whiny) a danger to myself and others! And an embarrassment to the family name!” She makes a vague gesture. “Which is the reason I’ve been  _ espoused  _ to  _ you _ .” The grin that was forming on his face falters, though she winces and gives him an apologetic look. “Sorry. You seem nice.” He gives a small smile and shrugs.

  
“I’m sure it won’t be so bad. Despite the rumors, I am occasionally capable of shutting up. Usually when I’m asleep, though.” She gives a tiny laugh and finally smiles at him, and he’s glowing from his monumental victory.   
  
“It’s not you,” she says, and her face goes a bit red beneath the freckles as she looks away. “I just… don’t really like guys.”   
  
“Conjecture confirmed!” He says loudly before he can stop himself. She looks at him again, blinking in bewilderment.   
  
“What?”   
  
“Er- nothing.”   
  
“You’re weird.”   
  
“ _ You’re  _ weird.”   
  
“Stellar argument, weirdo,” she says with a smile. 

At fourteen, he learns what it’s like to have a friend.

At fifteen, she gives him a book of poetry for his birthday. He hugs her very tightly in order to hide how overwhelmed he is with emotion. He becomes adept at bandaging her bloodied knuckles when she takes it upon herself to fight back against his tormentors. Two wrongs don’t make a right, he tells her softly. “I know that,” she hisses through her split lip. “They’re wrong and I’m right.”

At sixteen, he breaks his arm after Emilia miscalculates the velocity required to launch his chair from the ramp they’d constructed in his back yard  _ without  _ breaking his arm. His parents are perturbed by his lack of regret.    
  
At seventeen, she fights his bullies while he persuades her parents and teachers and sometimes constables to just show her some leniency, just this once, over and over again. They laugh about what a great team they make, and how their marriage is picturesque despite a complete and utter lack of romantic or sexual desire for each other. Like most marriages, she’ll say, and he’ll double over in uncontrollable laughter.

At eighteen, Emilia is sitting in his drawing-room, having recently been disowned. She’s always loved music, and so he plays the piano for her. Her hair is cut raggedly short and her eyes are red-rimmed and she’s sniffling. When he stops playing, she looks up at him, then hides her face in her hands as he comes over to hold her.

  
At twenty-one, he loses his virginity to a prioress after she gently teases him for bringing flowers to a brothel. That same prioress regales her next appointment, someone far more familiar, with vague details of the handsome young man with the wheeled chair who came to a brothel with a suit and flowers, and made this strangely adorable little noise whenever she stroked his hair. Emilia tries very hard to purge it from her mind.

At twenty-three, he’s a prized presence at parties.

He’s an adult now, he tells himself, he’s no longer the scared little boy he’d once been, and he’s confident. He’s self-assured and intelligent and he has a  _ friend _ . He’s still society folk, so he’s invited to society parties, and he acquires a particular taste for champagne. It makes him feel all warm inside and makes everything just a bit more  _ amusing,  _ and it’s great for melting away any remnants of the anxiety that still lingers within him. Emilia always hated these sorts of affairs, and so she considers the fact that she’s no longer obligated to attend them to be of great benefit. He’s happy for her; she always looked immensely uncomfortable in the dresses she was made to wear, and so he’s glad she can spend this time in her lab, constructing god-knows-what. (It’s not that he doesn’t have revolutionary sympathies; he simply fails to see how anyone can be made happier by means of a bomb.)

He’s glad she’s not forced to attend these affairs, but he’ll readily admit they were always more fun with her around. He doesn’t really know anyone all too well, and despite the confidence he’d slowly found, it’s hard to try to strike up a conversation with the people who, only a few years ago, would steal your wheelchair and lock you in a closet.   
  
Still, children are children, he supposes, and they’ve all grown up since then, and the fact that he’s been invited means he’s wanted. His fears of being unable to start a conversation prove to be utterly unfounded; on the contrary, people seem to want to start a conversation with him. It’s quite fun, the way his conversations quickly seem to foray into debates, and crowds gather and it’s all so exciting. And it slowly drifts into a rhythm. Someone approaches, a debate is sparked, the people grouped around them look incredibly amused with every notion he posits. His opponent will eventually concede and someone else will take their place. Eventually, he begins to take up any possible stance, just to see the looks on the faces in the crowd when he manages to make the wildest ideas half-cogent.   
  
Eventually, the event loses its thrill for everyone but him, and the crowd dissipates into their own conversations. He looks around, suddenly unsure of what to do with himself. He should know what to do with himself, he thinks. This happens every time.   
  
Hypothesis: If he wasn’t such a good debater, then people would stop inviting him to parties.

Thesis: He’s invited to parties for his debating skills. They make him interesting, and enjoyable, and in turn, worthy of attention and perhaps affection. (Counterpoint: That last point holds no tangible, evidential basis.) (No rebuttal is offered. An amended thesis is prepared.)   
  
Thesis: He’s invited to parties for his debating skills. They make him interesting, and amusing to watch. (Counterpoint: In what manner do they make him interesting?) (Rebuttal: Clearly he must be if so many people are watching.) (Counterpoint: Comedy garners an audience. It doesn’t make it particularly interesting.) (No rebuttal is offered. An amended thesis is prepared.)

Thesis: He’s invited to parties for his debating skills. It’s amusing to watch. (Counterpoint: Do they really see it as a skill?) (Rebuttal: If they’re so invested, they ought to. They ought to recognize the hours upon hours of study you’ve poured into this.) (Counterpoint: Not necessarily. There’s no evidence that they recognize you.) (No rebuttal is offered. An amended thesis is prepared.)   
  
Thesis: He’s invited to parties because it’s amusing to watch.

No antithesis is offered. He wins this debate.

At twenty-five, or six, or eight, something changes.   
  
It’s hard to pin down a frame of time in which it happened; change, in people, is not the volta of a sonnet but rather the slow erosion of a winding river. The change is imperceptible until suddenly, from the blue, it finds its course.    
  
He’s invited to parties as a gimmick. It’s fun for hosts to bait the more inexperienced  _ nouveaux riches  _ into approaching him and wait on bated breath for the poor, naïve soul to make the fatal mistake of engaging him in conversation. A crowd begins to form as the victim slowly realizes they’ve been lulled into a trap, and everyone is eagerly involved as they try to cope with the understanding that they’re currently in the process of trying to argue in favor of outlawing trousers or against the validity of the concept of validity or, if he’s feeling particularly lazy, that one plus one does not equal two. It’s a fun party trick -  _ he’s  _ a fun party trick, and after the fun is had, the crowd will disperse and he’ll have to wait for another unsuspecting victim.   
  
At first, he’s enraged, though the phase is incredibly brief. The phase of profound sadness is somewhat longer, though not meaningfully so. Catharsis happens rather quickly when he can argue against his own feelings, take up any stance on any subject, and retroactively alter his own emotions. He very quickly comes to the realization that his newfound position is a  _ fantastic one;  _ he might be invited as more a gimmick than a guest, but he’s still entitled to the alcohol and the debate is usually lively. It’s a breathtaking moment when he realizes that as long as he’s laughing, they’re laughing  _ with  _ him.

With excitement, he outlines to himself the benefits of his position.

Firstly, the usual guidelines of society behavior now no longer apply to him. Of course, he isn’t about to completely shun societal conventions, but if he forgets which damned fork is used for what (after all these years, he still can’t reliably remember), he can make something up about the contrarianism of the silverware and it will all be incredibly amusing.   
  
Secondly, a long line of acquaintances is much more manageable than a group of friends.   
  
Thirdly, none of his opinions can ever truly be known and thus held against him. In fact, some speculate if he even has true opinions at all. (He does, he tells himself. He must.) Identity is a fickle beast, but if one remains simultaneously approachable and enigmatic, everyone else will do the labor of constructing their own version of him.   
  
Fourthly, free drinks. He can afford his own drinks, but things taste better when they’re complimentary, he thinks.   
  


Fifthly, they want him there.

He hardly notices the subtle changes in himself until after the fact, in one of his early-morning trance-like states of internal deliberation and self-reflection. (Despite no longer being locked in closets, he makes sure to find the time.) He smiles more, in fact, a lot more. He smiles more than a younger version of himself would have considered possible. (Possibilities are always within a fluid state.) People laugh at his jokes rather than at him, he’s more willing to make his needs known and, much to his surprise, they’re often accommodated. 

He starts writing newspaper columns; he doesn’t need the money but he loves the responses he receives. He’ll often receive sets of letters from the same person, one a glowing exaltation, praising his genius and wit and charm, sent to the pseudonym the writer favors, the other a visceral and imaginative description of his untimely murder. The latter sort are always read with a special affection and saved in a tidy box on his bookshelf.

He develops, much to Emilia’s amusement, what could very well be called a social life. Acquaintances invite him for coffee, he attends more parties, he’s invited to  _ afterparties  _ (and occasionally the very secretive and illustrious after-afterparties). His taste for champagne becomes a taste for whiskey, and he’s told that he holds his drink quite admirably though he can’t be sure for himself. He will awaken, increasingly often, feeling like his head had been run over by a carriage, and look over to see a nude man or woman in his bed beside him. On a good morning, he’ll remember their first name, but if he can’t, he’ll give them a smile and a witty-one liner and that will suffice.   
  
He still visits the prioress’ brothel on a regular basis, and always brings flowers. He doesn’t need to pay for sex these days, but the money is worth it to have someone kiss his head and tell him he’s very handsome and sweet and that the flowers are still unnecessary.   
  
“ _ Au contraire, _ ” he’ll say, “They brighten the room,” and Jenny will posit that most people in a brothel don’t want the room to be  _ bright.  _ He will say something particularly contrived about how not being able to see just how beautiful she is would be giving the customer a run for their money and a nefarious business practice. She will roll her eyes and kiss him on the temple and he will feel smug about his roguish charm in a roundabout way.   
  
At thirty-two, he goes to bars.   
  
His parents pass away quite suddenly and he’s left to make funeral arrangements. His brain is in a bit of a fog through the whole process and he can’t quite figure out what he’s meant to be doing. It’s Emilia, actually, who makes the funeral arrangements while he sort of drifts around his house like a ghost. She handles the funeral arrangements while also reminding him to eat and to sleep and occasionally to change his clothes, but by the time of the funeral he’s pulled himself together enough to function somewhat.

She had attempted to get him to argue with her about what kind of flowers they should have, but he only seemed indifferent. That indifference spreads to most other topics as well, even after the funeral, and she watches him as he stares blankly out the window or at his bookshelves or at his dinner. He gradually stops attending his usual society functions, and while she doesn’t find that to be a bad thing, his overall reclusiveness is beginning to become worrisome. His piano and his bookshelves are collecting dust and unopened letters are piling up on his desk. She tries very hard to pull him out of this mire he's sinking into, but he's a stubborn sort. However, he's also a survivor and he drags himself out eventually.   
  
Emilia will occasionally bring him along to events of a rowdier sort, in taverns and gambling dens, where no one will really say the word  _ anarchism _ but the air smells like gunpowder and something in him is electrified. One can debate the debacles of chickens and eggs with amused society folk all day (and all night) but there’s something far more intimate and profound about debating ideas with consequences.

The first one in the room to say the word is him, and the stunned silence he receives is thrilling. These aren’t his sort (They were, once, but the orphanage years are a blur now.) and this isn’t his realm, but somehow he can insert himself as naturally as if he’d grown up drinking the dregs of discarded bottles of ale at that very tavern. The debate is spirited for some, enraging for others, and still others just return to their drinks. The tavern owner claps him on the shoulder and offers him a free tankard of the worst ale he’s ever tasted. It’s also the best.    
  
With an unfaltering grin, he debates policy, economy, philosophy, and sociology with complete strangers, usually playing devil’s advocate, for which, though he finds it an incredible thrill, he at least has the decency to sound hypothetical. Emilia doesn’t participate (she has to deal with him often enough), and instead simply watches him over her beer. It’s such a joy to rip apart each argument point by point - society folk never got so emotionally invested in his fanciful debates. This was something far more visceral. Eventually, the tavern patrons each concede defeat, drain their bottles and return to their lives.    
  
When he and Emilia head home, he’s rambling excitedly the entire way, recounting the ways in which he’d cut through their arguments with facts or with extremely twisted versions of facts or with some mixture of the two. When he looks to her for some sort of praise, he’s a bit taken aback by the disappointment in her eyes. She asks him if he’s even aware that his amusing hypotheticals are depressing realities. She asks him if arguing against the lives of people struggling to live them  _ to their faces, like this was a game,  _ is fun for him.   
  
He tells her it’s just debate; he could just as easily argue their side. What he’s willing to argue isn’t indicative of what he believes. She asks him if he believes in anything.

  
Hypothesis: If he exists, then he must believe in something. That is the state of every conscious being.

Thesis: He believes in something, therefore, he exists. (Fallacy. Circular reasoning. Begging the question.) (What question is that?) (What do you believe in?) (An amended thesis is prepared.)

Thesis: He believes in everything, therefore, he exists. (Counterpoint: It’s impossible to truly believe in everything.) (Rebuttal: Not if you try hard enough.) (Unsubstantiated nonsense. Rebuttal overruled.) (Objection. I stand by the original point.) (Counterpoint: you cannot truly believe in everything. You cannot truly believe two irreconcilable statements. Believing everything is the same as believing nothing.) (Fine then.)   
  
Antithesis: He believes in nothing, therefore, he exists. (Counterpoint: What? I don’t think, therefore, I am?) (Rebuttal: It takes conviction to truly believe in nothing.)   
  
Synthesis: He isn’t sure if he exists.   
  
He turns to ask Emilia, but she’s gone.

At thirty-two, his entire world falls apart.

He sits alone one morning, accompanied only by his coffee, a sandwich, and a newspaper. It is the twelfth of April. His eyes drift over the words, though won’t quite parse their meaning. Like his vision is perpetually out of focus, and the words are like shadows in his periphery he can’t quite make out. There’s some kind of barricade in his brain that keeps the words from making sense; he can make out the shapes but the meaning is lost, like hieroglyphics to him. He avoids the pictures.   
  
He sits alone one morning. His coffee is cold and his sandwich is uneaten and it’s the afternoon. He cannot read his newspaper.   
  
He sits alone one morning. His coffee mug is empty and it’s night time and the thought of eating his sandwich turns his stomach. Freidrich Hegel sits across from him. Neither of them speak, but the silent company is nice. He still cannot read his newspaper.   
  
He sits alone one morning. His newspaper is dated a week ago, though he isn’t sure how he knows what day it is. With another cup of coffee, two, actually, one for him and one for Hegel, the words in front of him begin to hold meaning.

  
  


_ MUNITIONS EXPLOSION IN WOLFSTACK _

_   
_ _ 'Calamity visited Wolfstack Docks in the late hours when an explosion blasted the Cotterell & Hathersage factory. The accident incurred a mortality of fifteen and no less than thirty serious injuries. Included in the toll was Emilia Hathersage, co-founder of the company: a woman of fierce ingenuity and meticulous conscience. _

_ 'It is an occasion of great melancholy and misery. Remember that they also serve, who labour in London's defence. Without them, our ships would have no engines, our navies no guns, our soldiers no bullets. Requiescat in pace.' _

The words hold meaning, yes, in the way numbers denote quantities, but they do not make sense. Words exist here, not sentences. Not points. Not facts.  _ Not facts.  _   
  
If he rules out the impossibilities, he is staring at a blank page. (Newspapers don’t publish blank pages, August.) (No, they print lies.) (Who would gain from a lie like this?)   
  
Hypothesis: If Emilia is dead then   
  
Hypothesis: If Emilia is gone then   
  
Hypothesis: If I’m all alone now then   
  
Hypothesis: If the newspaper states that Emilia is dead, then the newspaper is wrong.   
  
Thesis: Emilia cannot be dead because death in the Neath is more a hassle than an ending. (Counterpoint: Not always. Not in an explosion like that. An explosion you could hear from your library.) (An amended thesis is prepared.)   
  
Thesis: Emilia cannot be dead because she’s Emilia Hathersage. (Counterpoint: Nonsensical.) (Rebuttal: She’s strong.) (Counterpoint: She’s not invincible.) (An amended thesis is prepared.)   
  
Thesis: Emilia cannot be dead because she’s my dearest friend. (Complete non sequitur.)

Thesis: Emilia cannot be dead because she promised she’d never leave me. (Appeal to false authority.)

Thesis: Emilia cannot be dead. She cannot be dead. ( _ Argumentum ad nauseam. _ )   
  
Antithesis: Em-

Thesis: I haven’t finished yet I can find an argument I just need a moment to _think_ (Counterpoint: You’re only backing yourself into a corner, August. Give it up.)   
  
Antithesis: Emilia Hathersage is dead. You know this to be true. (Counterpoint: no i don’t no i don’t no i don't)   
  
Antithesis: Your closest friend, Emilia Hathersage, is dead. (Counterpoint: no she isn’t)   
  
Antithesis: Emilia is dead. (Stop it stop it stop it stop it) You know this because you heard the explosion, and you saw the pictures. (Counterpoint: newspapers are written by liars)   
  
Antithesis: You know Emilia is dead because you went down to Wolfstack that night and you dug through scorched rubble and twisted metal and you saw bodies and you heard screams and people watched you on your knees while your hands bled and you (Counterpoint: that’s _enough._ )

Synthesis: Either way, she’s not here.

At thirty-two, he’s expected at the funeral of his  _ wife. _ _   
_ _   
_ He laughs when he says it, and is met with looks of concern and pity. They won’t understand, he thinks, but that’s okay. It’s his and Emilia’s little joke.   
  
At thirty-two, he has to go through her belongings.   
  
She kept an apartment by the docks. The busted lock insinuates it’s already been raided by Fires’ men. No one knows what caused the explosion, or at least, no one will talk about it. He’s careful to leave these two facts on opposite reaches of his brain; if they were to connect, he would be unable to contain himself.    
  
He begins with the papers scattered across the floor. Her handwriting gets more illegible when she gets excited. He’s never understood her interests, but he holds a passion for her passion. Some are crumpled and torn, some bear boot prints. His jaw twitches.    
  
Many of her books have been ripped from the shelves. Many of them are  _ his  _ books. He can tell because of how well they’ve been taken care of. He picks up a chair that’s been upended. She would always come to his house, rather than vice versa, as the cluttered nature of her apartment made it difficult to operate his chair. He still has the ramp they broke his arm on, he thinks. He wonders what to do with it.    
  
He gazes around the room. One of his coats is thrown haphazardly over her bedframe. He’d wondered where it had been. He leaves it where it is. 

Any vital documents would have already been removed, he thinks, plundered by the neddy men that broke in the door only hours after the explosion. He saw them as someone was helping him home, his hands and knees caked with ash and blood. Only  _ hours _ .   
  
Perhaps now he understands her love for bombs. Now, when the rage within him is enough to reduce the entire world to rubble and ash and bodies. When his anger is threatening to burn it all away and incinerate him in the process.   
  
At thirty-two, he knows the reality of his hypotheticals.   
  
At thirty-three, people still speak about him and the tragedy in hushed tones. Someone else managed the memorial service, but he’s there. There wasn’t a body to bury. The high society that had disowned her makes an appearance and offers their deepest sympathies to him. The kids she’d beat up for trying to beat him up are all grown up now and offering condolences and he very nearly bursts into laughter. In the most polite and methodically dialectical manner he can muster, he confusingly tells them to burn in hell. They pat him on the back with overwrought pity.   
  
At thirty-four, they eventually stop talking about how he never leaves his house.   
  
At thirty-five, he makes a surprising, but not unwelcome, reentrance into both the salons of high society and the proletarian taverns.   
  
At thirty-six, he makes a more solemn entrance into a private room at the back of a restaurant, with a new name that is not at all new. (It’s almost the funniest thing he’s ever heard - a council with code names based on the months of the year - and he’s given  _ August.  _ What’s even the point of a code name, then? Perhaps it’ll work even better though; a comrade will accidentally use his code name in public and no one will bat an eye. Could be even worse though; someone will use his given name in public and he’ll get all touchy and suspicious. He wishes he had someone to tell this all to.)

When he enters, he notices how someone had the forethought to remove the chair from his place at the table, as he prefers to bring his own seating arrangements. He notices how one of them has the face of a dog. From the ones he knows, he quickly concludes that the places at this circular table are arranged like a clock; December at the top, June opposite them. He notices the interesting wood grain in the table. And on the floor. He notices how the chair on his left is empty and the woman on his right smells of honey and lavender. He notices that it must be difficult to get lavender in the Neath. He forces himself to keep noticing things. The lamp is flickering. People are speaking. Their words rush past him like a forest fire or the aftermath of an explosion or a cloud of ash. He’s desperate to find something to notice. There is one seat at the table to which he cannot look.    
  
Hypothesis: If he looks up right now, then he will see her.   
  
Thesis: She’s alive    
  
Antithesis: We’ve been over this. An impossibility.   
  
Thesis: Possibility is fluid

Antithesis: You’re losing it   
  
Synthesis: Look

When the meeting is over and the bureaucrats of the revolution have dispersed, they remain. He cannot look. He ponders the possibility that this could all be a figment of his imagination. Like Hegel. (Hegel had stayed in his bedroom with him, unspeaking, for three weeks after the explosion, until he mustered the strength to bathe and eat something. Hegel hasn’t been around since.) But he can hear her breathing and the way it seems to get more shallow and rapid the longer he looks away. She gives a shuddering breath and he can hear the tears in her throat and the sound of her pencil scratching on paper.   
  
Eventually, his resolve weakens and he looks, just barely. He can see her hands while she writes. They’re scarred now, far more heavily than before. Evidence the explosion had, in fact, occurred. (Of course, it occurred. I dug through the rubble. How is this a contention?)    
(If the explosion occurred, how is she here right now?)    
(Clearly, she must have survived it.)    
(Not possible.)    
(Lots of other people survived it. There were only fifteen deaths.)    
(It is possible to survive an explosion like that, yes. It is not possible that she survived it.)    
(How so?)    
(Because she would have told me that she was alive. She would not have left me in such a state.)    
  
His thoughts are broken by her sniffling as she folds the paper and slides it across the table to him. It’s only when he watches the tears roll down her cheeks that he realizes he’s looking at her for the first time in four years. He unfolds the paper.   
  
_ You’re our new August? I’m sure the secret identity will prove incredibly helpful. _ _   
  
_

He laughs, wildly, for the first time in four years, and then cries for the first time that day. He isn’t sure the point at which his laughter turns to sobs that wrack his whole body but she’s holding his head to her chest and stroking his hair and he feels like he’s eleven again, confused and loved.    
  
He cries until he physically can’t anymore, and he’s glad she brought a pencil and paper, as his throat hurts too much to talk. Silently, she hands it to him. His mind overflows with a whirlwind of things he wants to say, and the pencil feels like lead in his hand. After a long time, in which she waits uncharacteristically patiently, he slowly scrawls out  _ Why?  _ and begins to cry again.   
  
Hours pass and notes pass and they both alternate between crying and semi-delirious laughter. She can no longer hear him, or anyone. That’s alright, he writes, he’s always talked too much. She writes her response to him as the light overhead flickers. In the brief moments the room is shrouded in shadow, he can’t read her words.   
  
At thirty-six, he realizes why he’s afraid of the dark.

At forty, he runs for mayor.

Emilia finds the whole thing laughable and she presses him repeatedly to tell her if he’s being serious or not. She won’t tell anybody, she promises, but he refuses because truth be told, he doesn’t know either.

Very few believe he’s being serious. At first, he doesn’t think he is either. It’s not until he wakes up one morning, slumped over onto his desk with a damnable ache in his neck that he even considers the possibility of his own dedication. The gradually swelling group of supporters that seem to rush in and out of his office at all hours of the day (and night) astound him, and as his platform (or lack thereof) receives in equal parts detraction and commendation, the reality of what he’s doing begins to set in.    
  
He doesn’t make any change to the way he presents the legitimacy of his campaign (or lack thereof), but the coffee cups begin to pile up and the occasional cigarette becomes a bit of a terrible habit. It isn’t until one of his aides find him collapsed on the floor after a couple sleepless nights that he realizes he might have some sort of stake in this game, game as it may be.   
  
The council demands one of their own be implemented as campaign manager and a million thoughts go through his head about all the lights going out. His arguments are overruled by the force of authority and he’s bitter about it but relents. It’s May, which despite everything is a relief, as the way that February had been eyeing him the entire time made him start to sweat. He can work with this, he decides. All revolutionaries have some sort of common goal. He realizes, with a sudden jolt, that this is the first time he’s ever really considered himself a revolutionary.    
  
The implications of that briefly terrify him. Revolutionaries are the ones that throw bombs. They get people hurt. Then, he posits, anti-Revolutionaries are the ones that blow up factories. They get people hurt too. Then again, there’s no complete evidence of that, he posits back with a bitter smirk. He opposes violence entirely - he can’t see any situation in which there wouldn’t be another option. His best friend makes bombs for a living, but she wound up getting blown up too. As he wheels himself back to his office, something strikes him quite suddenly. 

Is not inaction in the face of suffering violence as well?

Violence cannot be constrained to merely bombs and guns and wars; his mind has drifted much too far into the existential to accept such a contrived notion. 

Is it violent to let someone starve?

Is it violent to not do everything you can for everybody as often as you can?

Hypothesis: If he thinks about this too much, then he’ll go crazy.

  
He lies in bed, staring at the ceiling, still in his clothes. He falls asleep with the lights on.

January keeps sending him checks with the council’s funds. Each one is more of an insult and eventually, he just begins tearing them up and throwing them into the fire. The council is further displeased with his recalcitrance towards plunging all of London into darkness, he will neither be forgiven, nor thanked, and at this point, he doesn’t give a damn. He tries to spend as much time as possible speaking to concerned citizens while simultaneously spending as much time as possible managing the various internal crises his campaign is subject to while also trying to convince his aides to go home for the night, to be with their families. (He only realizes he hasn’t slept in four days when Friedrich Hegel begins reciting from  _ Phenomenology of Spirit.  _ Hegel gets upset when August criticizes the lack of functional basis for the concept of a rigid and orderly procession of mental and spiritual development, and leaves.) February is breathing down his neck, finding him passed out at his desk is becoming an increasingly common occurrence, and everything he does feels more and more like folly. 

  
Hypothesis: If he just keeps trying, if he works harder, then he can help more people.

(That’s not guaranteed.)   
(I have to try.)

He entered the election on a whim, but on the night of the results, Emilia… April, rather, is rubbing his back while he throws up in the bathroom out of sheer stress. She’s the only one who will ever know, of course; his charisma, or perhaps his capacity for repression, is unparalleled. When he reaches for a cigarette she takes it from his hand and he’s too tired to argue. He could, easily, he tells himself, but the thought of writing or even speaking is exhausting and he’s exhausted. He’s  _ exhausted. _

When the results are announced and it’s confirmed that he’s lost, he cries with relief, much to the beleaguered amusement of his aides and the annoyance of his donors. Later that night, while aides and supporters and those more intimate to his campaign pass around his nicer bottles of whiskey, he locks himself in the bathroom and cries again out of shame.    
  
He awakens with a debilitating hangover and a man he can’t name in his bed and tries to figure out what he’s feeling.   
  
Thesis: In the name of all that is holy, he is so glad to not have to be the mayor of London.   
  
Antithesis: He’s failed and any suffering that occurs from that fact is on his shoulders.   
  
Synthesis: He wants to go back to sleep.   
  
The man who he’s barely beginning to recognize pulls him back under the covers and he makes no attempt to argue.

  
At forty-one he attends Jenny’s farewell ball and finds the  _ hors d'oeuvres  _ impeccable.    
  
She asks to see him in a back room, and after he closes the door behind him, he presses a kiss to the back of her hand. “How goes it, my dear?” He asks quietly. He hasn’t been to her parlor in some time. They’ve both been rather busy and he believes he may have found someone who will give him affection and praise for free. (Not that she didn’t give him discounts - realistically, he only paid for the wine.) She informs him that he’s the lucky one and that it’s a blasted job, and he chuckles warmly and pulls her down into his arms. His eyes fall shut as her lips brush his neck, and a shiver goes up his spine when she tells him she’s come to miss the flowers.   
  
At forty-two, he runs for mayor. Again.

There’s been a pain in his lower back that hasn’t gone away since the election of ‘84, and to his far greater distress, silver hair is beginning to become noticeable around his temples, but he has high hopes this time around. 

He also has a new strategy, though it could hardly be called strategy. In simply reversing all of the positions of his initial campaign, he’s simply creating an even more farcical endeavor; he postulates that it was, in fact, the farcicality of his initial attempt that garnered the majority of the support that he’d received. It wasn’t the glorious futility of revolutionary ideals that made him the beloved underdog, it was, instead, simply the fact that he’d strayed away from the political norm in any direction that made him an interesting candidate. If he were to stray even further in the  _ opposite  _ direction, the same reasoning would apply to an even greater extent. He explains this all in immaculate handwriting to Emilia, who reads it awfully slowly and narrows her eyes at him with what might be contempt. He ponders her expression as she painstakingly pens her response.   
  
_ Have you not considered that by trying to sell something you think would only be bought for its outrageousness that you might be pulling actual buyers out of the woodwork? _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Supporters, you mean. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Is this a game to you? _ _   
_ _   
_ _ It’s a game I’m going to win. _

She rises with a huff and slams her chair back under the table, not bothering to take the pen. His jaw tenses. She doesn’t understand right now, but if he can keep the lights on, he can live with her ire.

His second campaign proves to be considerably more facile than the first; he doesn’t exactly have to spend time making his positions known, as that would likely dissuade voters if anything. Being surrounded by constables is a stark difference between the excited calamity of anarchists that filled his office a few years back, and he can tell they don’t trust him but he’s also the best chance they’ve got on tightening their stranglehold over London, they think, so he can live with that too.    
  
He spends more time in Jenny’s parlor. (Since he’s changed his positions, politically and carnally, that revolutionary who he’d been sharing his bed with had stopped coming back. He can live with that.) The first time he’d arrived (a generous bouquet in hand), she looked at him in a mixture of mirth and disapproval and asked why he didn’t heed her warning about the hellishness of the job. He shrugs and says something about how everyone needs a little hell every now and then. (Or was it "help?") She can see how distant he seems and gets him into bed. She kisses his neck and he doesn’t much respond, and so she kisses him harder and he sighs, finally relaxing a little. His mind is elsewhere.    
  
He wants to be loved, yes, but above all, he wants to  _ win. _


End file.
